That song my dad and I wrote? I emailed it to the wonderful Bayesian Choir, a group of excellent people in the Bay Area who have performed beautifully  at the Bay Area Secular Solstices and who produced the spectacular HaMephorash (which you need to read Unsong to not be confused by (and I firmly recommend that)).

What utterly amazed me was their response! One of them is James Cook, who is not just a software developer and a composer of music, but actually develops software to help compose music. How cool is that! He took a liking to this little tune and produced a hymn-style arrangement for four voices which… I’m frankly unqualified to judge, but my dad as a classically trained composer assures me it is quite good. Here’s what it looks like:

And then, even better, they actually got together and sang it. And they even emailed me a recording!

I love this so much! Now mind you this wasn’t a publication or performance or anything. This is just what they can do after brief practice, in a living room, recorded with a cellphone, with no post-processing. Which makes it even more impressive!

So this is how a bunch of people halfway across the world, none of whom I have ever met, have taken that little song we wrote, improved it and sung it way better than I could. Feels fantastic. Thanks guys!

And again, my strictly standardized rhyme scheme (common metre only) is an asset. Previously I had an original melody that fit the Sermons – now I have four. 🙂 And my friend karlsebal wrote the arrangement into LilyPond, which allows me to produce MIDI files where various instruments play them, and I could conceivably mix these together in Audacity and see what comes out the other end. All due to James Cook and the Bayesian Choir. 🙂